Phyllis Schlafly's Eagle Forum has posted their list of demands on Congressional candidates. I've gone thru the lengthy list and compiled a Top Ten. Unsurprisingly, much of their list is drenched in anti-gay hate, racism, and xenophobia.

1. Will you vote to protect the Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA)?

2. Will you vote for federal school appropriations to require informed, written parental consent for curricula, surveys, classes or books that may be privacy-invading or offensive to religion or conscience?

3. Will you support legislation for Congress to use its Article III power vote to deny jurisdiction to the federal courts over areas where we don’t trust them, namely, the definition of marriage, the Pledge of Allegiance, the Ten Commandments, the Cross on veterans’ memorials, and the Boy Scouts?

4. Will you vote to prohibit the federal courts from hearing challenges to the federal Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA) or similar state laws respecting the definition of marriage?

5. Will you oppose federal hate crimes laws?

6. Will you vote against any legislation to help Puerto Rico to become a state?

7. Will you vote against any legislation to pretend that the District of Columbia is a state or entitled to a state’s representation in Congress?

8. Will you vote to end federal funding of so-called bilingual education (teaching immigrant children in their native languages) which the voters of CA, AZ, and MA have rejected?

9. Will you vote to revoke the citizenship of naturalized citizens who betray their oath of U.S. citizenship by claiming “dual citizenship” with their native country?

10. Will you support federal funding for abstinence-until-marriage education instead of for explicit sex education programs, school-based clinics, and the distribution of contraceptives in schools?

Tricycle Daily DharmaDecember 14, 2011

Evolution's Body

In the Samyutta Nikaya, the Buddha says, “This body is not mine or anyone else’s. It has arisen due to past causes and conditions.” The Buddha intuited some type of evolutionary process that creates our bodies, and his essential point is that they are neither formed nor owned by us. We now have evidence that our bodies arise from the forces and elements that make up the entire universe, through a complex chain of interdependent events. Internalizing this understanding can help liberate us from the powerful sense of ownership and attachment we have to the body, which is a cause of tremendous suffering, especially as the body grows old and we must face its inevitable destiny.

The day that a woman working the fitting room at Macy's thinks she can make store policy, in violation of store policy, because of her "religion," she should be fired. This is a rather amazing story, and an amazing assertion. That the rest of us have to do what our bosses say, that the rest of us have to let our bosses set policy for our companies, but if you're a Christian (well, a bigoted religious right Christian), you get to trump all that, and YOU get to decide.

That's not religious freedom. It's special rights for southern baptists.

A manager called Johnson in the next day to explain that Macy's policy permits individuals to go into the changing room of whatever gender they identify with.

"I refuse to comply with this policy," Johnson says she replied. She was then fired.

"I had to either comply with Macy's or comply with God," Johnson told The San Antonio Express-News.

Oh spare me. What's next? Do we not let Muslims into changing rooms? How about Jews (I hear they killed Christ, you know)? How about socialists? Or Republicans?

This isn't a story about her being fired because she got confused when meeting her first transgender customer. It's about refusing to obey store policy once the situation was explained to her. You just don't get to overrule your bosses on a public accommodations issue because you don't like someone, or your religion doesn't like someone. Under this theory, she could also turn away lesbians from the women's changing room, because after all her religion doesn't approve of "LGBT people" as she says during the interview. Does the religious right think that's okay too?

This isn't about religion. It's about special rights for one particular fringe American religion that thinks every other American, and every other employer, needs to live by its rules.

But back in 1994, he stated that “full equality” for gays and lesbians should be a goal, and even said he’d be a better Senator on gay rights than Ted Kennedy, who he was challenging at the time.

In a 1994 letter to the Log Cabin Club of Massachusetts that was obtained way back when by the Boston Globe that has been mostly forgotten, then-Senate candidate Romney said:

As a result of our discussions and other interactions with gay and lesbian voters across the state, I am more convinced than ever before that as we seek to establish full equality for America’s gay and lesbian citizens, I will provide more effective leadership than my opponent.

Romney’s previous quotes and his shifts on the issues are often presented as evidence that he has never had core beliefs and will say and do anything to win. But it seems clear that Romney sincerely held relatively progressive beliefs on issues like gay rights, health care, and climate change, back during his time as a politician in Massachusetts. In other words, he sincerely was a liberal Republican. After all, there were a lot of liberal Republicans in the northeast in those days. He was one of them, before jettisoning those views in service of his national ambitions, and conservatives like Perry are right to scoff at his claim that he’s always been one of them.